


Fragmentary

by midnighteverlark



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Amnesia, Bisexual Mike Wheeler, Gay Will Byers, Hawkins National Laboratory, Hospitals, Human Experimentation, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Loss, Mystery, Non-Chronological, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Abuse, Reunions, Undetermined - Freeform, possibly past mileven possibly love triangle just to shake things up?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28644552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnighteverlark/pseuds/midnighteverlark
Summary: On November 6th, 1983, Will Byers vanished into thin air. There’s been no trace of him since. Joyce Byers maintains, even after all this time, that she heard him. She saw him. He was in the lights, he was in the walls, he was there. Mike is one of the few people that holds out hope with her, because he heard Will too. But after half a decade his hope is finally beginning to fail.It’s June 24th, 1988, late at night when Joyce gets a phone call from a hospital in Indianapolis. They say they have an unconscious patient in room B207. They say he was found on the side of the road by a concerned citizen, brought in by ambulance, fingerprint tested since his identity was a mystery. They say it’s William Byers. They say, "Come see your son."Now, when Will wakes up, he can’t remember anything. Not his name, not his life, not the Upside Down - and not the government lab that had him for almost five years. But Mike is overjoyed (and highly conflicted) to get his best friend back, and Will is instantly and inexplicably drawn to Mike.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Jonathan Byers & Will Byers, Joyce Byers & Will Byers, Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Will Byers & Mike Wheeler, Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 31
Kudos: 70





	Fragmentary

**Author's Note:**

> So I've had this idea for EVER, and on a whim I decided to fill out some bullet-point-notes into something halfway readable today. So this is very slapdash and bare-bones, compared to my usual style. But hey at least I got the beginning up after like ... 1.5+ years of having it in my brain, lol.

The Beginning

On November 6th, 1983, Will Byers vanished into thin air. There’s been no trace of him since. Not a footprint, not a shred of clothing, not a speck of blood. Joyce Byers maintains, even after all this time, that she heard him. She saw him. He was in the lights - he was in the walls, he was _there._ She heard his breathing over the phone. She never stopped looking. But the rest of the town? Well... they found a body in the quarry, several months after he vanished. The body of a young boy. Too far decomposed to know for certain, but few folks had any doubts. 

That body was buried under a headstone with Will’s name on it, at a funeral that Joyce, to the shock of the town, refused to attend.

It’s June 24th, 1988, late at night when Joyce gets a phone call. It’s the hospital. They say they have an unconscious patient in room B207. They say he was found on the side of the road by a concerned citizen, brought in by ambulance, fingerprint tested since his identity was a mystery. They say it’s William Byers. They say, _Come see your son._

* * *

Fragment 2

It goes around and around for what feels like hours before Will finally snaps.

“Look,” he growls, scrubbing roughly at the face he still barely recognizes in the mirror. “How about _you_ tell _me_ some things, since you seem to know so much?” 

One of the doctors - the one with hair everywhere except right on top of his head, the one that seems to be in charge - tucks his clipboard under an arm. He fixes Will with an amiable but impenetrable expression. Patient. Neutral. Untrustworthy. “Like what?” 

“Like, where am I? What state are we in? What’s the date, who brought me to the hospital, _what is going on_?”

Will’s outburst seems to echo in the hard, fluorescent-blue walls of the hospital room. The woman named Joyce shares yet another worried glance with the tall, sallow boy claiming to be Will’s brother. They’re not as good at hiding their distress as the doctors are.

“Okay,” the head doctor says, as infuriatingly mild as he’s been since the moment Will opened his eyes. “All right. Let’s just sit down, yeah? Let’s sit.”

Will does not want to sit down. But he doesn’t trust these people, either, doesn’t trust the hovering nurses with their anxiety-inducing purple latex gloves, and _especially_ doesn’t trust the innocuously beige-pink cabinet to his left. Who knows what array of sedatives and narcotics they have stowed away in there. And he’s vastly outnumbered. If he doesn’t comply...

Well. He’d rather get some answers before things get too interesting.

Will sits.

“You’re at the St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. It’s June 26th, 1988. You were brought here on an ambulance after a motorist noticed you near a back road a ways east of here, apparently unconscious.”

The bottom drops out of the world. The doctor is still talking, but Will has stopped registering the words.

He knew already. He did. He knew bits and pieces, or he inferred, but hearing it all together like that, stated as bluntly as a weather report...

It’s finally hitting home, and it’s hitting like a steel mallet.

Will mouths, instinctually defensive, trying to come up with some way to refute that. But what can he say? The harder he tries to remember, remember _anything,_ the less he can grasp. For a few minutes there it was like he had memories in the back of his mind, whispering advice and warnings, he just wasn’t looking at them. Now... now that he tries to look right at them...

It’s like trying to catch smoke. It’s less than smoke. It’s nothing.

“Why don’t you tell us what you _do_ remember,” prompts a different doctor. This one is dark skinned, with eyes the color of amber and crooked front teeth. Will glances down at her hands, checking for the gloves, but she’s not wearing any. The knot in his stomach loosens half a degree.

“I keep telling you, I don’t remember anything. I didn’t even really know my name until people started calling me _Will_.” His voice cracks on his own name and he clears his throat, trying to pass it off as a dryness of tissue rather than the swelling and heat of stupid, unhelpful tears.

She gives a sympathetic smile. Will studies it. He can’t tell if he believes that smile or not. “Well, that’s okay, just shout out anything that comes to mind. Anything at all.”

“I mean -” He flops his arms at his sides. “What do you want? The sky is blue. The decimal _pi_ is 3.14592, etcetera, on for infinity. _Lord of the Rings_ was written by J. R. R. Tolkien.” 

“Yes, but, anything that you remember about what happened. Places you remember being. People you may have talked to. Faces, maybe. Names.” 

Will’s brow crinkles. “Names and faces? Am I in some sort of trouble?” 

“No, no.” It’s the half-bald doctor again. He talks to Will over his clipboard, leafing through pages. “We’re just trying to determine the extent of the memory loss.” 

Will blows out a breath, leaning back against the wall, trying to think. He remembers the dreams - that boy, with the dark hair and dark eyes and the supercomm radio in his hand - the ones that felt almost real. And the other dreams, the ones that were definitely not real, the ones with freckled skin and warm, chapped lips and soft laughter and fingers interlaced - but those were dreams. A figment of his imagination. As for real memories... 

Something comes to him in a dim flicker, there and then gone - like trying to recall a much older dream. It slips away like water through his fingers, but for the briefest of moments, he had a vague impression. The barest of ideas, of - 

“Cold,” he half-whispers, the syllable slipping out from his lips on a shallow breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Joyce shift, lifting a hand to her mouth, tracing her lips with a knuckle in a nervous gesture. “I think... I think I was somewhere cold.” 

Curled up. Shivering. Shivering so hard he was twitching with it, body juddering on the ground. His clothes are soaked through with... something. Not water. Something thicker. Slicker. Some sort of slime. It’s cold as ice, and Will’s arms fold up over his stomach, fingers rubbing against the wafer-thin hospital gown to remind himself that he’s _not_ cold, he’s _not_ curled up somewhere dark and damp. He’s sitting on a hospital cot that crackles with the sanitary paper, under harsh white-blue LED lights, being stared down by a fleet of doctors and nurses and two very concerned people who claim to be his family. 

“And dark,” he adds. 

* * *

Fragment 4

Will knows what to do.

For the first time all day, here’s something that feels familiar. Here’s something he can do on autopilot.

It’s another brain scan, of sorts. A different type. They’re trying to see if they can suss out what wires might be crossed in the confines of his skull, what patches of tissue might be damaged.

They hooked him up to the monitors, sat him down in a small medical room with a one-way mirror - they don’t _say_ it’s one-way, of course, they never do. But it must be. It always is. 

It was as they hooked him up that he fell into a track of habit, his subconscious saying, _oh, this._

The doctors haven’t started talking to him yet, but it doesn’t matter. He knows what to do. 

The needle tracking his brainwaves starts to twitch. It speeds up. The waves become uniform - and then they grow jagged, and Joyce’s head snaps to Will. It’s the last thing he sees before his eyes close. It’s too difficult to keep them open. He needs to focus.

“What’s happening?” she demands. “What’s wrong?” 

The needle flickers back and forth across the paper. Will can’t see it but he can hear it, and he knows what it looks like. He knows the waves are growing closer and closer together, he can see the patten like an imprint on the backs of his eyes, until all at once it’s printing a solid block of black across the paper, the machine working so hard to keep up that it begins to whine and chug - 

Shouting. Chaos. Will grits his teeth. How is he supposed to do this when they’re distracting him like that?

And then, through the red of his eyelids, Will sees the overhead lights flicker. Just a split-second of blackness. They flicker again. Lights, monitors, and electronics around the room begin to strobe and screech, going awol, and Will sways. His face is cold, he feels like he’s about to pass out - is this always so difficult?

The ear-splitting _crack!_ is a relief. Will hisses out a breath, eyes lapsing open to confirm. The room has gone dark, but - yes. The half-empty soda can that had been on the table in front of him is gone. The room still echoes with the shockwave of air closing over the space where it just was.

A couple beats pass before the lights come back up. When they do, everyone is stock-still. Staring at him. 

Will lifts a wrist to his upper lip, catching the warm tickle of blood. None of their expressions are particularly encouraging. His head turns to the one-way mirror, and he waits, silently - like he’s waiting for approval, or a signal. In truth he’s not sure what he’s doing, or what he just did. The habitual track he fell into is wearing away beneath his feet, leaving him just as stunned as everyone else in the room. His heart pounds.

Jonathan is the first to speak. His voice is low. Hoarse. “Will?” 

Will won’t look at him, eyes still glued to the mirror, wishing hopelessly for an answer.

“Will? What... the hell... was that?” 

He’s swaying. One of the braver nurses comes forward to steady him, murmuring something, but he’s not paying attention. He can feel sweat beading at his temples, his forehead, his neck.

“I... don’t know.”

* * *

Fragment 6

Mike picks up the Wheeler household phone at about 11:15pm. Mostly because he was in the kitchen for a glass of water and didn’t want the phone to wake anyone else up when it rang - and partly because he’s curious. Who the hell is calling this late? 

“Hello?”

In a new wing of an old hospital in Indianapolis, hidden away in an empty waiting room, Will tenses. He didn’t really have a plan for this. What is he supposed to say? _Hi, I’m an amnesiac in a hospital and I felt like I kind of remembered this number, but it could also be completely random. Anyway, I’ve been interrogated by doctors all day and I’m really just in the mood to_ not _get poked and examined anymore, so I snuck out of my room and left the woman who’s apparently my mother alone, asleep in a chair. So... wanna talk?_

And then he realizes that he’s been silent for too long, and the voice on the other end is saying, “Hello?” again, and Will trips over his words to answer.

“Hi, I - uh, I’m sorry, I - I’m not really sure why I called this number.” 

Barefoot in his kitchen, Mike thinks, _ah. Just a wrong number._ “Oh,” he says, already shifting to press the receiver back into the cradle. “It’s okay.” But just as he’s about to hang up, something clicks. It’s immediate and inscrutable - an instant, crushing wave of _wait. I know you._ It’s gone as soon as it hits and Mike stalls, trying to get this guy to talk more before they hang up. “What number were you trying to call?” 

Will sucks in a breath and shrugs to himself, standing in a bland, generic waiting room in the heart of the hospital, twirling the coiled phone cord around one finger. “I - I dunno. I mean, I actually... I’m in the hospital right now for a concussion, so...” He realizes how dumb it sounds halfway through and winces, spitting out the rest. “My memory is a little shot. I guess I meant to call _someone,_ but...” 

“Whoa.” The boy on the other end of the line sounds genuinely startled, unsettled even, and Will is reminded once again just how bizarre his situation really is. “Really? What happened?” 

“Ugh, I have been asked that question so many times today. Honestly, I... I have no idea.” He takes a half breath and hears a small exhale on the other end of the line, but the guy doesn’t say anything, no jumping in with a polite _well, best of luck with that, buddy. Bye now._ So Will keeps talking. 

And talking.

And talking.

He doesn’t mean to, didn’t plan on it, but the guy just keeps asking questions, making appropriate noises of interest and empathy, interjecting here and there. Will is beyond surprised at himself to realize that several minutes have gone by, during which he’s apparently been spilling his guts to this stranger. It’s just... too easy. Their patterns of speech fit together too well. It’s far too easy to just keep explaining, responding. And now that he’s started, he finds he can’t stop. There’s just too much in his head to stem the flow now that he’s opened the valves.

Waking up with no memories. The two people here, the ones with hair and noses like his own, saying they’re his family. Feeling awful because they’re clearly devastated that he doesn’t recognize them. Not knowing what happened to him or why he’s here, and he’s so tired of the hospital, he just wants to go home except he doesn’t remember what _home_ is... Will tells him everything.

His unexpected listener produces a low whistle at the end of it all. “Jesus. That’s insane, I mean... It’s like a movie. I believe you - I’m not saying I don’t believe you, it’s just -” 

“It’s crazy,” Will agrees, and laughs a little. By now he’s sitting down on the floor under the phone, leaning back against the wall. He blows out a breath, releasing some tension. “It’s crazy.”

Mike has settled at the kitchen table. The phone cord is stretched across the room, but it doesn’t matter. No one else is awake to walk by and get caught in it.

It won’t stop bugging him. That little twitch of almost-memory. That familiarity. He _knows_ this voice from somewhere. He _knows_ he does. Certain little phrases, a particular little hitch in his laughter. Mike’s brain is bombarding him with _you know this, you remember this, you recognize this, think damnit, think!_

He doesn’t even know why it feels so important. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe he’s seeing significance where there is none, finding something just because he’s searching for it. Maybe he just didn’t want to be alone tonight, and he’s taking any excuse he can to stretch out this unexpected boon.

And stretch it does. Mike looks to the kitchen clock with surprise when he realizes it’s been at least fifteen minutes. And then, as he starts thinking he should wrap up and let this person go, it’s been another fifteen. And another.

Will knows he’s working on borrowed time here, but he doesn’t care. He’ll take every minute alone that he can get - alone except for his late-night friend, that is. The longer he can stay away from the hospital staff and his sad-eyed supposed family, the better. Plus, this is good. This is useful. More useful than any of the unending tests they’ve put him through today. He’s testing the boundaries of his memory without even realizing it, drawing up information in the only way he can: unintentionally. 

“You’ve seen _Star Wars_ , right?” his friend says, and Will rolls his eyes and says, “Duh,” realizing as he says it that, hey, yeah, he _has_ seen _Star Wars_ . He couldn’t tell you where or when _he_ was when he saw it, but he did see it. Sometime, somewhere, somehow. That’s a start. 

And, later, Will says, “Well, ‘cause, you know how the Mines of Moria have that secret door?”

“Yeah!” comes the immediate response. “Wait, you’ve read _Lord of the Rings_?” 

And Will thinks, _huh, yeah, I guess I have._

He begins mapping out bits and pieces of what memories he still has.

Something else hits him in the middle of the conversation, too. Something more nebulous, but far more deeply rooted. Something he hadn’t even thought to consider, much less remember, until now.

Will makes a pun, unintentionally, and after a beat and a half sighs in tortured realization. The guy snort-giggles, a sound born as much from surprise as humor. And Will’s stomach gives a tight little flip. He presses a palm over his smile, and something instinctual inside him starts urging him to hide it, to keep his voice neutral, don’t let him know, don’t let them see _-_ and right then and there he thinks, _oh._

_Right._

_That._

Mike, sitting on the kitchen counter now, can’t remember when he started sharing personal details of his life. Maybe it’s the surreal quality of all of this, the strange anonymity of not knowing who you’re talking to, but he finds himself opening up more than he ever planned to. Because why the hell not? It’s not like he’ll ever see or talk to this person again. And _he_ opened up to Mike, so... it seems only fair. Anyway, it’s cathartic. Like writing a furious letter and then burning it in the fireplace, or telling secrets to your pet.

Mike tells his companion about his parents. How they’re on his ass because he got sent to the principal’s office for cursing out a teacher (“But he deserved it, he was being a grade-A asshole!”), how he misses his sister who went away to college, how he lost his best friend years ago and things have never been the same since. His companion quiets at that, murmuring, “I’m sorry,” and Mike just waves a hand.

“Nah,” he says. “I mean, yeah. It sucked. It sucks. But it’s been five years.” 

He doesn’t mention some of the more salient details. It’s too much to explain, even here and now, in this strange circumstance. Most people hear the word _lost_ and they assume it means _dead._ It’s easier to let them think that. (He’s beginning to think it himself.) It’s easier than trying to explain how the body they found was too decomposed to _really_ identify, how Joyce Byers still hasn’t mourned or abandoned her search, although after half a decade she’s beginning to tire. Mike thinks he may be one of the last people that truly believes her, and he... He won’t say he’s given up. He refuses to say that, refuses to think it, but...

It’s been five years. Five years and not a footprint, not a shred of clothing, not a speck of blood.

He reminds himself, for about the millionth time, that he heard Will’s voice. He _did._ _After_ the funeral, _after_ they buried that small, bloated body that _could not have been Will’s,_ because Mike heard him and Joyce says she saw him, just once, just for a moment. It wasn’t Will. It couldn’t be.

But the refrain feels dull by now. As much as he struggles and rages against it, Mike is beginning to lose hope. He’s haunted by the thought that maybe everyone was right. Maybe Joyce was blind with grief, after the disappearance, seeing her son’s face and hearing his voice everywhere. Maybe Mike never heard anything at all on the radio. Maybe they’ve been chasing a ghost this whole time. Maybe it’s time to finally, finally take some flowers to that grave.

The voice on the other end of the line has gone silent, apparently in introspection, and Will is about to apologize for bringing up painful memories when he registers movement. His head whips around, hard enough to leave a painful snag in his neck, but it’s not... not... 

Damn. He almost remembered something, he thinks, but it’s gone now. Again. For a split second he was _sure_ he’d see... _something_ in the corner of the room. He’s not sure what. But the room is empty. The movement he saw was outside the windows. Nurses rush back and forth, speed-strutting in that busy-bee way of theirs, and Will sighs.

“Shit, I have to go. I think they’re looking for me.” 

The voice rallies, a little rough as it says, “Well, wait, how should I call you back?” 

Will pauses mid-breath. This is unexpected. “I -” He cranes his neck, but he can’t see the hospital numbers inscribed above without standing and revealing himself. “I don’t know, um - tell me your number again in case I forget.” 

He grabs a pen from the nearby table, shoving back a papery sleeve to write near his shoulder. Hopefully no one will have reason to look under the sleeve of his hospital gown. 

He can hear doors opening down the hall, and voices calling his name, and more voices griping that it’s the middle of the night and would you please quiet the racket already?

But he hesitates, still, just long enough to say, “It was - thanks for -”

Mike hears the uncertainty in the fragmented thoughts, and after a beat of silence, fills in for himself. “You too.”

“Talk to you - well - bye.”

“Wait, what’s your -?”

The line is dead before Mike can say the word _name._

* * *

Fragment 3

The doctors pull Joyce aside after the examination to give her a run-down on her son’s condition. They say that, aside from the memory loss, he seems fairly healthy. A little underweight, and he could use some exercise to regain some muscle since he’s pretty weak right now, but he doesn’t seem to have anything major wrong with him right at the moment. No broken bones, no internal bleeding, nothing except a mild concussion. But... 

And there’s that “but.” 

One of the kinder doctors, a woman with tightly curled hair pushed back into a bun, takes a breath to deliver the blow. Joyce wonders if she’s a mother, too. If she can understand, or at least imagine, the sheer volume of overwhelm Joyce is facing already. Her son. Alive. Will, alive. Not dead. Five years of being told she was crazy, or in denial, and she was right. She was right, and Will is back, and he doesn’t remember her. He cringed when she went to hold him, in those first overjoyed moments before they realized something was wrong.

The doctor clasps her clipboard to her chest with one arm and delivers the news matter-of-factly, but with sympathy in her eyes. “Will displays multiple signs of past injuries, trauma... Possibly abuse.” 

“Oh, god,” Joyce sobs, turning aside for a moment. 

The doctor goes through the list, pointing to her clipboard with a pen, tapping at diagrams and notes. There are signs of past head trauma. A broken arm, long ago healed. Strange results in his brain scan - inconclusive thus far. The memory loss, of course. Signs of malnutrition. Scars on his scalp. 

They also note that, while Will panicked when they tried to put an IV in, he seems remarkably unphased by all the medical examinations. No, not _unphased_ exactly... More like he just tunes out. He zones out and his eyes go blank, and he just follows directions without saying anything, wordlessly stepping up on the scale, letting them flash lights in his eyes, sitting silently while they take his blood pressure. Staring ahead without struggle as they mark the places on his temples to secure the monitors. And not only that, but he seems to know what to do. Like it’s muscle memory. A nurse approaches with a tongue depressor and he opens his mouth without being told. A doctor presses a stethoscope to his chest, his back, his sides, and he breathes in at the right times, unprompted. 

He seems completely unsurprised when, later that day, they adhere the monitor wires to his head. He regards the situation with not an ounce of curiosity or surprise. Like he’s been through this song and dance before. Like his body remembers, even if his mind doesn’t.

* * *

Fragment 5

That night, Will ditches his hospital room.

It was easy. The security here is... well, frankly it’s laughable. Joyce nodded off in the chair beside his. All he had to do was wait for Jonathan to go off on some errand, and it was barely any trouble to transfer the heart rate monitor from his finger to hers and slip out the door between patrols.

He’s sick of that room. He’s sick of being watched, being interrogated.

He wanders down the hallway, aimless, dodging nurses. He climbs a few flights in a stairwell. He doubts it goes all the way to the roof, but it’s a nice thought. To climb all the way into the fresh night air, breathe freely, look down on winking city lights. Maybe he could escape entirely. Maybe there’s a way down off the roof. But what then? He doubts he’d get far. He’s not even wearing any pants.

To avoid an incoming doctor, who strides along pinning papers to the cork boards outside of patients’ rooms, he ducks into a waiting room. It’s a fairly small space, situated in the middle of the warren of patients’ rooms. No windows to the outside world, but lined with windows facing the surrounding hallways. Off-white blinds have been pulled halfway down. Will wonders if he can close them entirely without suspicion, deciding after a moment that it would attract too much curiosity.

This liminal space is impersonal, friendly without being warm, and courteous without being comfortable. It’s where friends and family can sit on the beige-colored couches and watch the TV hung up by the ceiling as they wait for news. And it’s here that Will finds a courtesy phone.

He picks it up idly. Not really planning on calling anyone, just messing around. _Beep, boop, boop,_ he thumbs in a random code. He hangs up before it can go through, then lifts the receiver again. It’s only by chance that he happens to glance up at the list of numbers taped to the wall. Nearby hotels, taxi services, other medical buildings. He punches in the area code that appears on all the numbers - _765-_ and all at once his brain is filling in the rest of a phone number. His hand moves to punch in _7-6-5_ and muscle memory kicks in smoothly, automatically guiding his finger through the rest of a string of numbers. He lets the ingrained habit pull him along, finishing out the phone number and wondering who it is that he remembers the number of. _765-591-7316._

Pulse fluttering in the cage of his ribs, Will presses the hard plastic of the receiver to his ear and waits. 

* * *

Fragment 7

He has one of those dreams again.

It’s not the first time. He’s just cognizant enough to know that. He knows, in a vague and impressionistic way, that he’s dreamed about this before. The details vary, but it’s always the same boy. Sometimes he’s young, baby-faced, speaking earnestly into a walkie talkie. _We’re still looking for you; I haven’t given up on you._ Sometimes he’s Will’s age, holding Will’s face in his hands, calling him _love,_ kissing his lips. But it’s always the same boy, and he’s never real. He’s never there when Will emerges into reality again, because that’s all the boy is. A dream. A figment of Will’s imagination - a coping mechanism of his lost and lonely mind.

Will has one of these dreams now.

Kind of. Almost. Something is different this time. This time it’s all mixed up with the voice on the phone, the voice that made his stomach flip. 

He dreams that he’s not in a hospital anymore, that he’s somewhere outside. In some vague dream-neighborhood, perhaps, the details otherworldly and skewed, but not in any threatening way. The boy is with him. As usual, he’s like a mirage, like a magic-eye picture. When Will tries to look straight at him he fractures into abstract dream-concepts; a whole person, and yet impossible to discern as an aggregate. Only comprehensible as a collection of features. Tapered cheeks. Freckles. Pale skin, dark fluffy hair that might be curly, but Will can’t focus enough to tell. As soon as he focuses on one aspect of his appearance, the others drift out of memory.

Except for the dark eyes. Those are very clear, even when Will looks away. Dark, expressive eyes. And the voice is so familiar now - in a way that, even while dreaming, Will _knows_ is different than before. This familiarity is new. He knows that timber, those inflections and speech patterns. The tendency to repeat a phrase twice for emphasis. This time, walking along the sidewalk of the dream-neighborhood with its mirage-shimmering houses, the boy beside him is more than an idea, more than a phantom. This time, Will feels like he’s walking with a friend.

They laugh, and try to balance on the curb with arms held out like airplane wings, and knock each other off-balance. Will can’t quite remember what they’re talking about, but it’s comfortable. Companionable. They play-fight as they make their way up the street, grabbing and batting at each other and then chasing each other, dodging around a parked car before Will sneaks up behind his friend and pounces, straining a little to lift the taller boy, crushing his ribs, both laughing. When they nearly fall, the boy snugs an arm around Will’s waist to steady them. Will feels his cheeks burn, a keen blood-blush pinching his face and ears, and he smiles at the ground as they slow to a walk again. 

It feels good to be out in the air like this - was he stuck inside somewhere before? A hospital - that’s right, he was in a hospital. But before that... wasn’t there somewhere else? Somewhere _like_ a hospital, same fluorescent lights and white walls, same doctors’ gloves and masks, same examinations, same... blood... but... It’s gone. Just as he started to tap into the memory it waned and disappeared, darting through his fingers like a goldfish. Leaving a chalky-bitter taste at the back of his tongue, like pills, or the powder on violet rubber gloves. And as he grasps and loses this image - memory? - the atmosphere shifts on a dime. There’s a storm pulling in, black and purple in the sky. Cold, wet wind buffets him, flapping his jacket, pushing his hair into his face, and all at once the boy’s hands are gripping his shoulders urgently. 

And Will gapes, because just like that, the boy’s face is clear. One cohesive whole, his dissociated features consolidating into something solid and real and undeniably human. Pale skin burnished pink by the wind, freckles sprinkled across his cheekbones, nose, and disappearing up into his disheveled bangs. A wide mouth, and those dark eyes, now open wide as he stares slightly down at Will. 

He’s saying something, his lips moving, but Will can’t hear him. His ears are ringing, stuffed full with other voices, voices that overlap and echo, most of them calling his name. Long, drawn-out, hoarse - like they’re calling for him over a long distance, all at once - “ _Will!” “Will Byers!” “Will!” “Will?” “Will, come in, do you copy?” “Will Byers!” “Will? Will!” “Will, it’s Mike, do you copy?” “Will Byers!”_

Behind the black shadows of houses, lightning _crack_ s scarlet in the sky.

Joyce’s voice rises abruptly above the muddle, mixing in with what sounds like kids’ voices - _“Will, I’m here! I’m here! Oh, god -”_

_“Will! It’s us, are you there?”_

_“Can you hear us? We’re here!”_

_“Tell me where you are! How do I get to you? Listen to me!”_

And all the time the boy’s lips are still moving, but Will can’t hear him over the cacophony, over the howling wet wind, and Will keeps repeating, “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you,” but it’s no good, and his mother’s voice is still echoing in his skull, drowning out everything else -

 _“I swear I’m gonna get to you, okay? But right now I need you to hide! No, no, listen - I - I will find you, but you have to run now! Run!_ Run! _”_

And as Will lurches awake, whole body tense and cold and sweating, he swears the last thing he sees is the boy mouthing his name.

He scrabbles for paper and a pencil. They gave him a flimsy spiral bound notebook earlier, at his request, and he dashes off sketch after sketch without pause. He has to preserve this. He has to, before he forgets again.

Pencil breaking, clicking madly as he renews the lead and sets to it again, working fast and sloppy. Working out the shape of an eye, the curve of a jaw. And then, slowing down just a little now that he has his reference sketches firmly on paper, he starts on a rough pencil portrait. The lines are sketchy and layered, features blocked in with exploratory strokes, shadows smudged into existence with the smear of a thumb over graphite. 

Hair, lips, freckles. For the first time, Will is looking at the face he’s only ever seen while asleep, and never remembered in the morning. 

Of course, it’s just a dream. Some coping mechanism of his brain, lost and longing for a friend. He’s told himself that many times before. Still, the messy sketch is sending the neurons of his brain into a fireworks show. He knows that face. He _knows_ that face. And it must just be a trick of his subconscious, the dream still fresh in his mind, but he can’t shake the feeling of familiarity. Like he’s looking at a copy of a copy of a copy of something he once knew by heart. Like he’s hearing a cover of a cover of his favorite song. Like he’s struggling to reconcile the grown-up features of a childhood friend that he hasn’t seen in years.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do let me know your thoughts! I'm kind of playing around with a new style here.  
> (Where's Fragment 1, you might ask? You'll see.)


End file.
